Tag: Quick Digital

Choosing a Web CMS Platform: How to See Beyond the Hype

Choosing a Web CMS Platform: How to See Beyond the Hype By .  Available from <http://www.cmswire.com/web-cms/choosing-a-web-cms-platform-how-to-see-beyond-the-hype/> [Sep 20, 2016]

Anyone reading this article in the hopes of finding a cure-all for all your web content management woes, stop here.

Choosing the right web content management system (CMS) is no guarantee of success.

A great implementation of an average to poor CMS will perform better than a great CMS implemented poorly.

But choosing the right CMS gives you a great start on what we hope will be a long and beautiful relationship.

So how do you go about picking the right one for your organization?

Tip #1 Establish Your CMS Requirements

I promised myself I wouldn’t mention this again, but the top of the top-most tips is to invest in developing requirements and scenarios before doing a feature function comparison of what’s in the market.

Tip #2 Understand the Content Management Market

This vital step can turn into a potential distraction, as some organizations view “understanding the market” as “understanding the art of the possible.” What’s possible often has little to do with your requirements, and will turn your procurement process into pursuit of an unrealistic wish list.

Of course your set of requirements needs to include some forward thinking to ensure the platform can stay the five year course. Market research from analysts and vendors can augment the pragmatic needs you have today, and offer some level of future-proofing against trends.

However, the CMS market can at times offer a hodgepodge of opinions on where the future lies, which don’t always relate to the real needs of managing web content.

I’ve been through the hype cycles over the years. Personalization hit first, with Vignette battling BroadVision over an argument about cookies.

Then we moved on to enterprise CMS, with promises that Vignette, FatWire or Interwoven/Autonomy would become the SAP of enterprise information management. And here we are today, with the battle of ideas between Adobe, Sitecore and SDL around customer experience.

Personalization is back in the picture, which brings us full circle to Vignette in 2003.

The rise and fall of the perceived market leader can happen pretty quickly.

Multiple web CMS vendors have come and gone over the years and clients still face the challenge of publishing web pages.

So review the market, but use your requirements and try to avoid the more prosaic predictions and distracting functionality.

Tip #3 Don’t Over-Spec and Over-Buy

One of the common issues I’ve seen with clients is that they have over bought.

You’d think buying something beyond your needs would be a safe bet. Sure, eventually we may want to manage every content asset in this hub, yes, at some point we may introduce 17 languages, yes, someday we may do multi-channel targeting.

However, what really happens is that the organization ends up with an unwieldy system that is expensive to maintain and 50 percent of its functionality lies idle.

An “enterprise” product (however you want to define that) will inevitably be more complex to implement and use.

This happens to big and small organizations. Just because you are a large enterprise, does not always mean you need a big enterprise product from the top right of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.

Those features that seemed so fantastic in the demo just get in the way of getting stuff done.

The complexity of the solution raises the risk of a bad implementation, increases the price for the skills required, the authors hate using it and finance hates paying the maintenance (and those cheeky chaps in the local market are using WordPress).

Tip #4 Open Source is Not Free Beer: It’s Free Puppies1

A free download of some crowd-sourced IP is not the key to web content management nirvana — the same challenges await during the implementation and maintenance of the solution.

A box full of poorly taught free puppies could result in greater mayhem than those potentially well-trained puppies that you could have paid for.

Once again, business requirements are key. All of the solutions, regardless of source, need to be judged against those requirements. Being “open source” is not a business requirement, it is just a different way to structure the procurement and servicing of your project.

The open source market offers some great solutions that will stand up to many enterprise needs, but open source does not equal a free pass on meeting your business needs.

Judge the solution the same way as any other vendor, including skills, costs, support and risks for the duration of your five year relationship.

Tip #5 Ensure You Compare Apples with Apples

The cloud and new commercial models based on subscription and consumption have also disrupted the standard perpetual software licensing model and commercial relationships.

At this point, most vendors are offering their products in a combination of these models: offering to host a perpetual software license, offering SaaS or PaaS and folks like Acquia offering open source (Drupal) in the cloud.

Comparing solutions using these different models is a challenge.

Direct comparisons of a perpetual license that doesn’t include hosting and support to a PaaS or SaaS solution won’t work. Ultimately you need to consider the full cost, including hosting, support, maintenance, etc., in whatever form that comes.

Once again it comes down to this: does the contract meet your business needs?

Tip #6 Dig Into the Community, Follow Up on References

Community activity is a standard litmus test for open source projects.

Community activity can signal a vendor’s progressive development and the level of support to expect going forward. If a product has no friends, no buzz in the development communities, you will have a hard time attracting skills to your project.

It’s not just the developer community. Speak to people that use the product — and not just to the references the vendor provided. Try to speak to the user community or your peers in other businesses who have implemented the solution.

Some simple online sleuthing and a polite LinkedIn request could save a lot of pain later.

Tip #7 Imagine Day 365 of the Project

You’re sitting across the table from the vendor, ready to commit to this potential partner for the next five years.

This person has to be there with you when you are tearing your hair out at 2 a.m. when the inevitable disaster happens. Will they be there?

Use the procurement process to get to know the solutions and the partner. You only get one go at this, take your time and remember — you’re in charge.

Avoid the boring procurement box ticking of RFPs. Emphasize setting tasks, like demoing against scenarios, a proof of concept and a pilot that enables you to see them outside thestage managed pitch conference room.

You’re entering a two-way marriage which should benefit both of you. Let’s just hope that this time around it’s “the one.”

Title image Geetanjal Khanna

Choosing a Web CMS Platform: How to See Beyond the Hype By .  Available from <http://www.cmswire.com/web-cms/choosing-a-web-cms-platform-how-to-see-beyond-the-hype/> [Sep 20, 2016]

Six tips for staying safe online

Six tips for staying safe online Article By: Megan Ellis.  Available from <http://technology.iafrica.com/features/1036155.html>[Mon, 19 Sep 2016 11:48 AM]

More and more people are falling victim to cybercrimes, from downloading malware to falling for phishing scams.

We spoke to Kaspersky Lab Africa’s MD Riaan Badenhorst to find out how users can stay safe online.

Here are six tips for staying safe online.

Encrypt your sensitive information

“If your smart device or computer contains data encryption features, make sure you use them to minimise the chances of your personal information from being lost or stolen,” Badenhorst says.

This can apply to anything from confidential files to pictures you wouldn’t want to show up online.

Various operating systems have some way of encrypting files and a quick internet search can point you in the right direction.

Don’t use unreliable apps

Messenger apps are considered by users to be the most unreliable communication tools, according to Kaspersky Lab research.

However, it’s pretty difficult to avoid using these apps in today’s online world.

Badenhorst suggests only using apps you know that you can trust.

“It is also important that users are careful when choosing online tools for personal communication, and only use a device reliably protected by a password and an Internet security solution,” he says.

Whatsapp this year announced that it had encrypted user messages, meaning that your information is pretty safe. However there are a few unreliable apps out there.

Install an Internet Security app

Badenhorst suggests using internet security apps and programs to protect your devices. There are a variety of options out there with varying levels of security.

Of course, he touts Kaspersky Internet Security for Android as a good option.

“It can help protect your privacy, and safeguard personal data, even if your device is lost or stolen. It also has a function that allows you to protect and track all the data saved on your smartphone – so that it is easily traceable and well protected,” he says.

Create a strong password

This must be the oldest advice in the book, but it’s also the most often ignored advice.

Having a strong password is the first line of defence from having your information accessed without permission.

You should also not use the same password for multiple accounts – after all, this is how Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg got hacked earlier this year.

Don’t open suspicious emails

One of the easiest ways hackers can get your personal information is by using email scams. While most of now know not to trust those Nigerian prince requests for help, there are many variations of scams out there.

“In light of emails that claim that you have won the lottery or a certain amount of money due to a competition, if it’s too good to be true – it probably is,” Badenhorst said.

“Remember to NEVER send your personal information via email to anyone you don’t know (not even banks ask for this information via email).”

Also, do not open files or follow links from senders you don’t know – this can often lead to malware being downloaded to your device.

“In most cases, when handling a spam message, the best course of action is to simply delete the message immediately,” Badenhorst says.

Be cautious while shopping online

Online shopping is one of the great things about the internet – but it also comes with risks.

“At Kaspersky Lab we encourage users to check if the URL onto the address bar is correct. Instead of just clicking a link to take you to your chosen retailer’s website, it’s safer to type the retailer’s URL into the address bar on your web browser. It may take a little more effort, but this simple action can help to prevent you visiting a fake or malicious website,” Badenhorst says.

Also, always check when you have to put in any payment information that the URL starts with “https”. Sites that don’t have a valid security certificate won’t have this, or if their security certificate has expired there will be a red line through the “https” to indicate it is not necessarily secure.

Photo Credit: pexels.com

Six tips for staying safe online Article By: Megan Ellis.  Available from <http://technology.iafrica.com/features/1036155.html>[Mon, 19 Sep 2016 11:48 AM]

5 tips to keep kids safe online this school year

5 tips to keep kids safe online this school year by Sean Wright, For The Tennessean.  Available from <http://www.tennessean.com/story/life/family/2016/09/15/5-tips-keep-kids-safe-online-school-year/90413066/> [12:49 p.m. CDT September 15, 2016]

As kids go back to school — often with laptops, smartphones and tablets in tow — we’re reminded of both the wonderful opportunities technology offers them and of the dangers it presents. From cyberbullying and sexting to pornography, there is a side of connected life that we want to protect our children from. But where should we start?

The good news is that the right technology can both protect kids and teens from these dangers and facilitate healthy lines of communication about internet safety. Here are five tips for finding and using the right kinds of internet safety tools for your family.

1. Find a good content filter. Simply put, content filters block the bad stuff. These software applications prevent access to websites that contain inappropriate content.

Most content filters give parents granular controls over what kinds of content they wish to block, and many contain age-defined filtering levels. Some solutions, such asOpenDNS, even filter content at the network level, giving parents the ability to filter all web traffic in their home network — on a child’s laptop, tablet, phone or even friends’ devices.

2. Consider monitoring software. Monitoring software facilitates conversation between parent and child about online behavior. These applications report online activity to parents, allowing them to approach their children about dangerous or unhealthy online habits.

Covenant Eyes is a monitoring solution with a monthly flat-rate subscription fee for unlimited devices within a family. The subscription also includes a device-level content filter, which allows parents to protect children even when they access the internet outside of a filtered home network.

3. Understand how these tools work together. Content filters are a necessary first line of defense, protecting against the massive amount of pornographic and otherwise objectionable content on the web. But as advanced as content filters have become, they don’t catch everything. This is where monitoring software is helpful. Sometimes, the best filter is another human being — one who has the best interest of the child in mind and can communicate with and educate the child if his or her online activity becomes problematic.

4. Review parental controls on mobile devices. According to the Pew Research Center’s 2015 study on the way teens use technology, nearly 75 percent of teens now have a smartphone or access to one. This means that parents need to adapt internet safety strategies to mobile devices as well as computers.

This can be tricky because, unlike traditional computers, smartphones and tablets provide multiple ways of accessing internet content. For instance, on an iPhone, it’s possible to access Facebook, as well as content from the web that people post in a newsfeed, via the Facebook app, which is separate from the phone’s native Safari browser. This makes content filtering and monitoring difficult because there’s no good way to monitor and filter all apps across the board.

Still, when coupled with administrative settings on the device and healthy parent-child communication about app use, filtering and monitoring solutions can make smartphones and tablets relatively safe for kids and teens to use.

Ultimately, parents will need to decide what further controls, if any, should be imposed. On iOS devices, for instance, parents can block access to social media apps, and can require parental permission for all app downloads.

5. Take a holistic approach. Because of the numerous ways kids and teens access the internet and interact on it, it’s critical to think through a holistic strategy that combines content filtering, monitoring software, parental controls and healthy parent-child conversations. Parents should arm themselves with information on the capabilities of internet safety technologies and match those capabilities to what is best for their children.

Sean Wright is founder and president of Affinity Technology Partners, a managed IT services provider in Brentwood. The company specializes in network management, systems administration and network security for small to mid-sized businesses and non-profits. They also provide home users with family internet safety services, wi-fi speed-up and general technology support.  Learn more atwww.affinitytechpartners.com.

(Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

5 tips to keep kids safe online this school year by Sean Wright, For The Tennessean.  Available from <http://www.tennessean.com/story/life/family/2016/09/15/5-tips-keep-kids-safe-online-school-year/90413066/> [12:49 p.m. CDT September 15, 2016]

Here Are 7 Content Marketing Tips for Your Startup

Here Are 7 Content Marketing Tips for Your Startup by A.  Available from <http://tech.co/7-content-marketing-tips-startup-2016-09> [September 12, 2016; 9:00 pm]

Most effective startups hit the ground running with their content marketing efforts. If you own a startup and want to generate a lot of buzz, build up a base of interested buyers and, take the world by storm, you’re going to need to focus on content marketing way before day one.

It’s easy to assume that kick-starting a content marketing campaign involves a lot of work, and it’s partly true. However, by following these six tips, you’ll be on your way before you know it.

Define Your Audience

While setting up your startup, you should have conducted plenty of market research to determine the types of people who are most likely to want what you have to offer. Take the information that you have already gathered about your target audience and refine it further by creating unique buyer personas for the various different types of people who you will be targeting.

Going forward, use these personas to craft content that is as effective and engaging as possible.

Establish a Strategy

As eager as you may be to get started with your content marketing efforts, there’s no point in proceeding without establishing a clearly defined strategy first. Now that you have defined your buyer personas, you can safely do so.

Your strategy should clearly outline various details of how you will engage in content marketing. Address questions like how often you’ll publish, where you’ll publish, what types of content you’ll use, and who will you be creating said content.

The key is to commit yourself to using the strategy rather than just writing it out on the first day. Making it easy to amend will go a long way as well, because you will almost certainly have to tweak it again and again as time goes by.

Choose Content Creators

As a startup, you probably aren’t in the position to spend huge amounts of money on content. However, making sure that you allocate decent amounts of your marketing budget for it will go a long way in helping you set up right the first time.

If possible, assign someone on your team to produce content for you. With any luck, you already have a proficient writer and marketer on board. Ideally, they should be well-versed regarding SEO and online marketing too.

Otherwise, hit up crowdsourcing sites to find reliable writers. One way to keep costs low is by choosing cheaper writers and then editing their work to suit your standards.

Brainstorm Topics

To keep your content flowing along, it helps to come up with a huge list of topics right off the bat. At first, brainstorming ideas will seem easy. Before too long, though, you’ll get writer’s block worse than ever.

Use sites like Reddit and Quora to see what people are curious about when it comes to your particular niche or industry. Speaking of niches, go ahead and get specific about certain topics to generate more ideas. In fact, in-depth pieces that cover specific aspects of a subject tend to do quite well.

For each topic that you come up with, define the platform on which it will be published. Go one step further by defining when it will be published. With all of this work out of the way, executing your strategy will be a snap.

Be Different

To truly stand out, you must be intentional about not fitting in. Do something beneficial to your audience and remarkably different from what’s common that you get everyone talking about it. One way to take an unconventional approach is to develop an interactive content format for your audience.

A good example is the homepage of Neil Patel’s blog, QuickSprout. Once you input your URL into it and grant it Google Analytics permission, it pulls data from your website, analyzes it and gives you insights on making your better content.

Another good example is the homepage of HowMuchCostAnApp. It leads you through a step-by-step, “if-this-then-that” process that helps you decide what specific features you want in a mobile app and how much it would cost.

In both cases, the content is interactive, benefits the audience and is unconventional.

Choose a Platform

Your first instinct may be to spread your content across as many social media platforms as possible. However, this is a good way to waste a lot of time and money. Instead, turn to the market research that you’ve conducted to determine where your ideal customers tend to spend time online.

Do they generally favor Facebook, or are they more often found on Twitter? If you run a B2B startup, don’t forget about LinkedIn as a platform for your content. Use analytics to see which platforms seem to work well and which don’t.

Continually adjust your strategy accordingly until you have narrowed things down to the most effective platforms and channels for your audience.

Publish, Promote, Refine

With all of the groundwork out of the way, you’re ready to start publishing content. Of course, publishing it–even on the ideal platform–is merely the first step. You must actively promote it too, or it will disappear into the ether.

Therefore, get serious about your social media game. Establish and get active on the platforms that matter the most to your target audience. Don’t just promote brand-new content, either. Over time, pull up old pieces of content and promote them again. It’s amazing how much mileage you can get out of a single, well-crafted piece of content.

Finally, use analytics every step of the way to continually refine and optimize your content and your overall strategy. Remember that content marketing is, by necessity, always a work in progress.

Here Are 7 Content Marketing Tips for Your Startup by A.  Available from <http://tech.co/7-content-marketing-tips-startup-2016-09> [September 12, 2016; 9:00 pm]

 

Here’s Why You Need to be Sending Email Newsletters (and a Few Tips)

Here’s Why You Need to be Sending Email Newsletters (and a Few Tips) by Larry Alton.  Available from <http://revenews.com/e-mail/heres-need-sending-email-newsletters-tips/>. [Sept 14, 2016]

If you’re like thousands of other marketers, you’re fully invested in social media and conversion funnels. However, you probably haven’t thought twice about email marketing, and newsletters in particular.

You may want to rethink this oversight, or you’ll deal with consequences down the road.

The Value of Email Newsletters

For many, the thought of an email newsletter conjures up archaic images of marketing campaigns of the late 1990s and early 2000s. However, just as everything else has evolved, so has the newsletter. Modern newsletters – also known as e-newsletters – are powerful and highly effective. Here are a few specific reasons you need to be using them:

  • Nurtures relationships. One of the best things about an email newsletter is that it allows you to nurture existing relationships and reinitiate contact with old customers who have been cold for months (or even years). While some subscribers will send your email straight to the trash bin, most will at least give it a cursory look. This gives you the opportunity to catch their eye.
  • Drives targeted traffic. When you segment your email list and send highly relevant content to subscribers, you have an opportunity to drive targeted traffic to landing pages, product pages, videos, articles, and other resources that benefit your brand. There are very few other channels that allow you to do this.
  • Enhances monetization. Finally, don’t forget about revenue. If your email newsletter is sent to a large subscriber base – and you enjoy high open and click-through rates – you may be able to sell ad space and create an additional stream of revenue.

It doesn’t matter your industry or specific goals – an email newsletter can help you engage customers in meaningful ways.

A Few Handy Tips and Tricks

Exactly how do you execute an effective email newsletter? Let’s highlight a few handy tips and tricks:

  • Nail the design. You absolutely have to use a professional design for your emails. You can either hire a professional or use a template. The latter is typically more cost-effective. As Green Residential notes, “There are thousands of options available online for download, whether you’re inclined to pay for them or not. It might be worth it to pay for a good template and give your newsletter a more polished look.”
  • Subject lines are crucial. When a newsletter or promotional email comes into an inbox, the headline is often one of the deciding factors in whether or not it’ll be opened. This is why you have to focus on creating strong headlines that grab the recipient’s attention. Since most emails are being opened on mobile devices these days – 40 percent to be exact – short and sweet headlines are preferred.
  • Balance the content. While you may want to use your newsletter as just another promotional tool for your brand, put yourself in the shoes of your subscribers. They would much rather read informative/educational content. When developing your newsletters, limit promotional material to just 10-15 percent of the total content distribution. It’ll be much more powerful this way and you’ll experience less attrition.

There’s a lot of creative freedom with email newsletters, but these tips and tricks have helped thousands of other businesses enjoy success. Try them and see what you think.

Leverage the Value of Email

Email marketing should be a staple in your digital marketing mix. While it doesn’t get as much publicity as social media and landing page design, it’s equally important. Make sure you’re leveraging the value of email newsletters moving forward and you’ll reap the rewards of engaged customers.

Here’s Why You Need to be Sending Email Newsletters (and a Few Tips) by Larry Alton.  Available from <http://revenews.com/e-mail/heres-need-sending-email-newsletters-tips/>. [Sept 14, 2016]